WTAE-TV
 
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States |
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| Branding |
WTAE 4 (general) Channel 4 (general; secondary) Pittsburgh's Action News 4 (newscasts) |
| Channels |
Digital: 51 (UHF) Virtual: 4 () |
| Subchannels | 4.1 ABC 4.2 This TV |
| Translators | 22 (UHF) (4.3) Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood |
| Affiliations | ABC |
| Owner |
Hearst Television (WTAE Hearst Television, Inc.) |
| Founded | July 1957 |
| First air date | September 14, 1958 |
| Call letters' meaning | Television sister to the former WCAE, now WPGP |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 4 (VHF, 1958–2009) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 273 m (896 ft) |
| Facility ID | 65681 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°16′49″N 79°48′11″W / 40.28028°N 79.80306°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www |
WTAE-TV, channel 4, is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by the Hearst Television division of the Hearst Corporation and has been owned by Hearst since the station's inception. The station's studios are located on Ardmore Boulevard (PA 8) in the suburb of Wilkinsburg (though with a Pittsburgh mailing address), and its transmitter is located in Buena Vista, Pennsylvania. On cable, WTAE is carried on Comcast channels 8 (channel 6 in Bethel Park, channel 5 in Monroeville, and channel 3 in Greensburg) (standard definition) and 804 (high definition), and Verizon FiOS channels 4 (standard definition) and 504 (high definition).
WTAE-TV began broadcasting on September 14, 1958; the station has been Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate since its sign-on. From the beginning, the Hearst Corporation has been involved in the station's ownership. How the station came to be was the result of a long and complicated drama surrounding the awarding of the station's construction permit and ultimate broadcast license.
Although it was the sixth-largest market in the country for most of the early television era, Pittsburgh had only one major commercial television station for close to a decade – DuMont-owned WDTV (channel 2, now KDKA-TV), which signed on in 1949 and carried programs from all four television networks (DuMont, ABC. NBC and CBS). Further development of stations in Pittsburgh was halted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s freeze on license awards, which ran from 1948 until 1952. Even after the freeze was lifted by the FCC's Sixth Report and Order, the FCC held off on allocating new VHF stations to Pittsburgh in order to give the smaller cities in the Upper Ohio Valley a chance to get on the air. The cities in the Upper Ohio Valley are close enough together that they must share the VHF band.
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Wikipedia